13 replies to this topic

[seojob]

I am planning a website. I can not decide how to choose my domain name.
Should I stuff my keywords [this I don't want to] like www.link-building-blah-blah.com ? Or would it be wise to try a different way? Please help me decide.

Thank you.

[Jill]

Create a domain name that brands the company or the product. Definitely do NOT stuff it with keywords.

It's unnecessary if you're creating a real site, for a real business with long-term prospects for growth.

[seojob]

Thank you Jill. I agree with you.

SJ

[discountdomains]

If you can select a short memorable name, less chance of typo's and easier to build into a brand etc.

Best of luck with your site.

Clare

[clasione]

Be prepared to take alot of time choosing a good name....

Like Jill said - if it's going to be for a long term company....

Be sure to have it spelled correctly and fit your theme....

The shorter the better - be unique....

You know when you've got the right one in mind...

[turboscout]

you can try nameboy and other domain name generators to brainstorm for more ideas, I personally went through 1000+ domain names before coming up with the one in my signature. A Thesaurus really helps though

PS: getting those make-your-site-sell.com domains only make your company looks amateur

[aldwin]

I agree that you shouldn't focus on a long domain with your keywords.. however a good generic domain could help.

For example if you sell guitars, a guitars.com will definetely give you free advertising, because many people just type-in that name.

A similar domain however will cost many thousands (if it is for sale at all) so it is up to you if you want to spend your money in a domain or in good SEO.

[sufyaaan]

Check out this post at seochat forum. I think it will help you are lot about the topic.

Edited by chrishirst, 03 August 2005 - 05:16 AM.

[chrishirst]

I've taken out the link as it was to a non attributed verbatim post from elewhere.

the original from 2002 is here

www.webmasterworld.com/forum25/614.htm

[yourlifeforce]

While I don't think it matters what keywords you have in your domain ... it does matter what keywords are in your url.

Dog Toys
www.dogtoys.com - Doesn't do much

www.dogtoys.com/products/dogtoys.php - Will be spotted by the engine.

I have found this to be true with all my sites.


<edit live links edited. Please see [url=http://www.highrankings.com/forum/index.php?act=boardrules]Forum Rules[/url] />

Edited by chrishirst, 05 August 2005 - 09:45 AM.

[Tom Philo]

My domain name has no meaning to any of my pages - and most of my pages end in index.shtml - yet on the search terms that people really use to find information will result in that page showing up from #1 to #50 on the SERP (competing against 10,000 to 490,000 other pages by varying terms).

My home page - ending in index.shtml - is #8 when using 4 keywords against 490,000 other pages in Google, #5 Yahoo (391,000), #12 MSN (61,145).

Write for the users and the domain name and ending file name really does not come into play.

Detailed pages with meaningful file names may help some more when people are very narrowly searching, then again, if you wrote, coded, and described the page correctly, they would find it anyway.

[Jill]

www.dogtoys.com/products/dogtoys.php - Will be spotted by the engine.

No, actually it won't. Unless your keyword phrase is the one word "dogtoy" which seems like a silly phrase to me.

[peao18]

While I don't think it matters what keywords you have in your domain ... it does matter what keywords are in your url.

Dog Toys
www.dogtoys.com - Doesn't do much

www.dogtoys.com/products/dogtoys.php - Will be spotted by the engine.

I have found this to be true with all my sites.

I would say the opposite is rue. www.dogtoys.com will help much - for "dog toys" of couse.

[Randy]

Welcome peao18 !

Neither is true actually.

Keyworded URLs, whether in the domain name or in file names/directory structure, do not gain any major advantage unless people link to the site using the URL as anchor text. Without that it's simply not worth the effort since the same effect can be attained with or without the keyworded URL. Simply use anchor text wisely and you can avoid all of the rest.

And in this case, as Jill already mentioned, if your keyword phrase is "dog toys" having a url that contains "dogtoys" (no space) will do you exactly zero good, no matter how many times it appears in the url.

They're simply not the same thing.